Simplicissimus (27 page)
‘Definitely not!’ said Jupiter. ‘In his wisdom my hero will prevent this by uniting all the Christian sects in the world.’
‘A miracle!’, I said. ‘That would be a great achievement. How will it be brought about?’
‘I’ll gladly tell you’, said Jupiter. ‘After my hero has established universal peace he will address the spiritual and temporal leaders of the Christian nations in a very moving sermon and open their eyes and hearts to the damage the divisions in matters of faith have caused. After hearing his convincing reasons and irrefutable arguments they will of themselves desire general unification and put the whole thing into his most capable hands. Then, as King Ptolemy of Egypt did with the seventy-two translators, he will bring together the most ingenious, learned and pious theologians from all places and all religions in a quiet yet cheerful place where they can ponder important matters undisturbed. Food, drink and all other necessities will be provided. They will be required first of all to resolve the differences between the religions as quickly as possible while giving each word the most careful consideration; when that is done they must come to unanimous agreement on the right, true and holy Christian religion, according to Holy Writ, ancient tradition and the established opinion of the Fathers, and set it down in writing.
While this is being done, the Lord of the Underworld will start worrying that his empire will be diminished and will be scratching his head to think up all kinds of ploys and tricks to put a spanner in the works and if not stop the whole thing, then at least put it off for ever and a day. He will remind each theologian of his self-interest, his position, his quiet life, his wife and child, his reputation and anything else that might get him to support his opinion. But my brave hero will not be idle either. As long as the council lasts he will keep the bells ringing throughout Christendom as a constant reminder to all Christian people to pray to the Supreme Deity and beg for the spirit of truth to be sent down. If, however, he should notice that one or other is being won over by Pluto, he will torment the whole assembly with hunger, as in the conclave of cardinals. And if they still refuse to speed this noble enterprise, he will preach them a sermon on hanging, or show them his miraculous sword. Thus first of all with kindness and then with severity and threats he will see that they get down to business and stop deluding the world with their obstinacy and false doctrines. Once unity has been achieved he will order a great festival of rejoicing and announce this purified religion to the whole world. Any heretic who denies it he will smear with tar and brimstone or spatter with thorns and send him to Pluto as a New Year gift.
I have answered your question, Ganymede, and now it is your turn. Tell me why you left Olympus, where you poured me so many a goblet of nectar.’
I thought perhaps this fellow was not such a fool as he appeared but was just giving me a taste of the medicine I had given to others in Hanau in order to be allowed to pass more easily. I decided to try and provoke him to anger, since that is the best way to tell whether a fool really is a fool, and said, ‘The reason I have left heaven is that I missed you. I took Dedalus’s wings and flew down to earth to look for you. But wherever I asked, I found people spoke ill of you. Zoilus and Momus have vilified you and all the gods to the whole world, describing you as so wicked, licentious and stinking that you have lost all credit with mankind. You yourself, they say, are nothing more than an adulterous, whoring pubic louse; with what justification can you punish the world for those same vices? Vulcan is a complaisant cuckold who let Mars’s adultery pass without any real revenge; Venus herself is the most hated slut in the world because of her promiscuity, how can she grant grace and favour to anyone else? Mars is a robber and murderer, Apollo a shameless whoremonger, Mercury an idle gossip, thief and pimp, Priapus an obscenity, Hercules a brainsick bully, all in all the whole crew is so rotten the only suitable place for them is the Augean stables which already stink to the whole wide world.’
‘Oh!’ said Jupiter, ‘Would it surprise anyone if I forgot my kind-heartedness and blasted this slanderous scum, these blasphemous mud-slingers with thunder and lightning? What do you think, my faithful and beloved Ganymede? Should I punish these purveyors of calumny with eternal thirst like Tantalus? Should I crucify them along with that loose-tongued Daphitas on Mount Thorax? Or crush them in a mortar with Anaxarchos? Put them in Phalaris’s red-hot bull in Agrigentum? No, these plagues and punishments are all much too lenient! I will refill Pandora’s box and empty it out over the heads of these rogues. Nemesis will awaken the three Furies and set them on these villains and Hercules will borrow Cerberus from Pluto and hunt them down like a pack of wolves. And when I have plagued and pursued them enough I will bind them to a pillar with Hesiod and Homer in the house of hell and hand them over to the Eumenides to be tortured mercilessly for all eternity.’
Whilst Jupiter was uttering these threats he pulled down his trousers in the presence of myself and the whole party without the slightest show of embarrassment and proceeded to hunt out the fleas which, as we could see from his speckled skin, were tormenting him terribly. I could not imagine what was going to happen next, but then he shouted, ‘Off you go, you little pests! By the Styx, you shall never have what you begged me to grant you.’ I asked him what he meant by this and he answered that when the fleas heard that he had come down to earth they sent their envoys to greet him. These then complained to him that, although he had assigned dogs’ coats to them to live in, some (because of certain characteristics of women) had strayed into women’s fur. These poor lost souls, they went on, were treated terribly by the women, who caught them and not only murdered them, but first of all crushed and tortured them between their fingers that it would make a heart of stone bleed.
‘And’, Jupiter continued, ‘they presented their case so movingly that I felt sorry for them and agreed to help them, with the proviso that first of all I should hear the women’s case as well. To that the fleas objected that if the women were allowed to reply they knew very well that they would either paralyse my goodness and kindness with their poisonous tongues and drown out the fleas, or seduce me into a wrong verdict with their sweet words and sweet looks. They hoped, the fleas said, they would be allowed to continue to enjoy the very close relationship between us, pointing out how loyal they had been, and would continue to be. Although no one knew better than they what had gone on between myself and Io, Callisto, Europa and others, they had never told tales, not even one single word to Juno, with whom they also used to stay. And they were, they emphasised, still as discreet as ever. They were not like the ravens, who informed Apollo of his lover’s unfaithfulness; no human being had ever learnt anything from them, even though they had observed all my affairs from the closest proximity. If, however, I was determined to allow women to hunt, catch and slaughter the fleas they found in their own game reserves, then their request was that in future they should be given an honourable execution. They wanted to be either pole-axed like oxen or dispatched like game and not, as at present, suffer the ignominy of being broken and crushed between women’s fingers. In doing this, they went on, these women were turning members with which they often touched something quite different into instruments of torture. It was, they concluded, a thing that brought dishonour to all upright men.
“You gentlemen”, I said, “must torment them terribly for them to treat you so?”
“That’s true”, they replied, “but they’re full of ill-will towards us anyway. Perhaps they are worried we see, hear and feel too much. As if they hadn’t had enough assurances of our discretion! What’s the problem? They won’t even leave us in peace in our own territory. Some of them them give their lapdogs such a thorough going-over with brushes, combs, soaps, shampoos and other things that we have to leave our rightful homes and find somewhere else to live. They’d be better off spending the time delousing their own children.”
After that I gave them permission to come and lodge in the human body I had assumed so that I could feel for myself the effects of their activities and come to an informed judgment. And what did the odious little vermin do? They immediately started tormenting me so badly that I had to get rid of them again, as you have just seen. They want a special dispensation? Well I’ll dispense them one right out of my arse: any woman can crack and crush them whenever she wants. Indeed, if I catch one of the little villains myself, I’ll do just the same.’
We couldn’t really laugh out loud, both because we had to keep quiet and because our lunatic didn’t like it, and Tearaway was almost bursting. Just then the look-out we had posted high up in a tree called out that he could see something coming in the distance. I climbed up and saw through my telescope that it must be the carts we were lying in wait for. However, they were not accompanied by foot-soldiers but by an escort of some thirty-odd dragoons. From that I quickly deduced that they would not come through the wood where we were lying in wait but keep to the open where we would not have been able to take anything from them, even though there was a nasty stretch where the track ran across the plain some six hundred yards from us and about three hundred yards from the end of the wooded hill.
I was determined not to have wasted all that time lying in wait to catch nothing but a fool, so I rapidly made another plan which also seemed feasible. By our position was a watercourse which ran down through a gully to the open country. It was easy to ride along and I posted twenty of my men where the stream came out of the trees, taking up my position with them but leaving Tearaway in the place where we had been lying in ambush with orders to keep well hidden. I told my musketeers each to make sure of his man; some I detailed to shoot as soon as the escort was close, some to hold their fire in reserve. A few of the old hands asked what I had in mind. Did I think the escort had taken this route, where no peasant had been seen for a hundred years, assuming they would have nothing to do? Others believed I had magic powers, for which I had a great reputation at the time, and thought I would cast a spell to make the convoy fall into our hands. But I had no need of devilish arts, only Tearaway’s.
When the escort, which was keeping pretty close order, was about to pass directly in front of us, Tearaway, at my command, began to bellow like an ox and neigh like a horse so loudly that the whole wood echoed with the sound and you would have sworn there were horses and cattle there. As soon as the escort heard it, they thought there was a chance of booty, of picking up something they did not expect to find in the whole area since the countryside was almost completely deserted. They broke ranks and rode so quickly into our ambush it looked as if each wanted to get the best of the bullets, which came so thick and fast that our opening volley knocked thirteen out of the saddle and wounded a few others. Then Tearaway came dashing down the gully shouting, ‘Here they are, Huntsman!’ which so frightened and confused the dragoons that they were incapable of riding backwards, forwards or sideways, but dismounted and tried to escape on foot. However, I took all seventeen prisoner, including the lieutenant commanding them. Then we attended to the carts, unharnessing twenty-four horses. Apart from that we only took some silk and linen, for I could not afford the time to rob the dead, never mind go through the carts properly. The carters had got away on horseback as soon as the ambush began and might alarm the command in Dorsten which would send out a party to intercept us on our way back.
When we had finished packing Jupiter came running out of the woods shouting, ‘Is Ganymede going to desert me?’ to which I replied that I would if he refused to grant the fleas the dispensation they wanted.
‘I would rather see them all drowned in Cocytus first’, he replied. I had to laugh at this and since I still had spare horses I let him mount one. However, he rode like a turnip and I had to tie him to the horse. This led him to remark that our skirmish had reminded him of the ancient battle between the Lapithae and the Centaurs on the occasion of King Pirithous’s wedding.
When it was all over and we were galloping back to Soest as if the enemy were in hot pursuit it suddenly struck the lieutenant what a dreadful error he must have made to let such a fine troop of dragoons fall into enemy hands, thirteen of them being killed into the bargain. He became desperate and wanted to reject the quarter I had granted him, trying to compel me to have him shot dead. His carelessness, he thought, would not only bring him disgrace and the accusation of irresponsibility, but would damage his prospects of promotion; at worst he might have to pay for the losses with his life. I tried to cheer him up, reminding him that many good soldiers had suffered reversals of fortune but I knew of none who had been driven to despair. His behaviour, I told him, was a sign of faint-heartedness; a brave soldier would immediately be thinking of ways to make good the loss. I made it clear he would never get me to commit such a deed, that was against all the rules and conventions governing the treatment of prisoners.
When he saw I would not do him the favour he started to insult me, thinking he could make me angry. It hadn’t been an honest fight, he said. I had behaved like a rogue and a highwayman and had stolen the lives of the soldiers under his command like a thief. This made his own men whom we had captured extremely afraid. Mine, on the other hand, were so furious they would have riddled him with bullets if I had let them, and it was as much as I could do to hold them back. I didn’t turn a hair at the things he said. Instead I called on everyone, friend and foe, to witness what had happened and had the lieutenant bound and guarded like a madman. I promised him that as soon as we reached our camp – assuming my officers allowed it – I would give him free choice of my own horses and weapons and prove to him in open combat with sword and pistol that deceiving the enemy was allowed in warfare. I asked him why he had not stayed with the carts he had been assigned to? Or if he wanted to see what was in the wood, why had he not first sent out a proper reconnaissance party? That would have been better than this silly performance that impressed no one. Both my own men and the captured dragoons agreed with me and said they had been out on raids with a hundred different leaders and every one would not only have shot the lieutenant dead for such an insult but have sent all the prisoners to the grave with him.